Of Interest

The leadership of the Record — Matthew Borin, Zoe Harvan and Christian Ruhl — faces some difficult questions in covering “Safety Dance,” the latest sexual assault controversy at Williams. Reader comments are wanted on all the below.

1) Do they mention the real name of the accused, currently called John Doe in the legal filings? We all know his name, both because of anonymous unmaskings at EphBlog and because his attorney was sloppy in her initial legal filings, as pointed out by MRL ’91. I am unaware of any journalistic standard which protects privacy in a case like this. But the Record, out of sympathy for a fellow Eph, may not want to out him for all of Google to see.

2) Do they mention the real name of “Susan Smith,” the student who accused Doe? There is a journalistic standard — as a Williams official has repeatedly told me! — that reputable publications do not publish the names of reported victims of sexual assault. But, in those cases, the reported victim has no other status in the story beyond that of victim. In this case, Smith is an admitted perpetrator. No one contests that she slapped Doe.

Imagine if the Record had gotten a copy of this March 13, 2016 cease-and-desist letter (pdf) from Doe’s attorney to Smith. It accuses a college employee (Smith) of assaulting a student (Doe). Would that be newsworthy? Of course! Would the Record be justified in publishing both Doe and Smith’s real names? Of course! So, Smith’s name would (should) have appeared in the Record back in March. Her actions alone justify a lack of anonymity. But then, two months later, she accuses Doe of a sexual assault that occurred a year prior. Does that after-the-fact accusation mean that the Record is not allowed to publish her name with regard to a different, albeit connected, news event? I don’t know.

3) Should the Record use material that was (incompetently?) redacted from the filings? Consider page 42 from exhibit 13 pdf. In the PDF, it looks like:

Many of the filings feature this sort of heavy redacting (for reasons that are unclear to me). But, if you just copy-and-paste that into a text processor, you get:

Susan’s Third Interview

The alleged incident of non-consensual sex occurred on Labor Day in 2014, on the night that Matias Crespo hosted his first party of the semester. Susan responded to John’s contentions as follows:

o Susan estimates that she and John only attended two parties in Matias’s room that semester.

o Susan maintained that, with the exception of the September incident, she and John never had sex after consuming any alcohol. She disputed John’s contention that on some occasions, they would have sex after drinking between one and three drinks each. She stated that when they went out they would drink to the point of such intoxication that they would throw up together in their room, but they never had sex after drinking.

o With respect to Susan’s level of intoxication that night, she believes that John observed her shot-gunning a beer because he was also shot-gunning beers. She also recalls that she was drinking shots of Fireball.

o Susan’s last recollection before engaging in sexual intercourse was of her leaving Matias’s room. During sex, she recalls that she was “physically trying” to get away from John by attempting to “shift out from under him,” but he was restraining her, using his body weight and strength to “hold [her] down.” NB: Susan described herself to Ms. Kurker as “lying on her stomach.”

And so on. Everything in the filings that has been redacted is actually available. Should the Record use that information in its reporting?

4) Should the Record give EphBlog credit and/or reference our reporting in any way? If it only uses documents that it, on its own, got from PACER, then it probably does not have to, unless the reporter first found out about the case by reading EphBlog. Or maybe it should credit KC Johnson? Either way, if the Record uses filings that we have provided, then it ought to credit EphBlog. Specifically, I bet that if the Record uses the non-redacted (or sloppily redacted) filings — which it almost certainly got from us — it ought to mention EphBlog. It should not pretend that it is using documents from PACER unless it has gotten them from PACER itself.

13 Responses to “Notes for Record Reporting on Safety Dance”

anon williams says:

I don’t think the Record has even covered this yet, since close to no one is talking about this on campus. Professors don’t even know, and it’s probably because the lawsuit has yet to be covered by the NY Times. Waiting for that to happen, and THEN people will start talking.

Well, the Record has not put out an issue since the news came out, so a lack of coverage is hardly surprising. I can’t imagine that they won’t cover it this week, but the Record has surprised me before!

David,
Your tendency to pick on the Record is ridiculous. The legal briefings of one party to a suit are of little interest to the college community. Especially as most mistakes came from an employee at Wooster, not at Williams, the College’s student newspaper has no particular requirement to cover this case with any serious amount of detail.

Next, your continuous insistence that the Record must publish certain stories, written in certain ways, to be a valid institution is as tiresome as it is irrelevant. You aren’t interested in PC culture, you say, before trying to require Williams students to write an article the exact way you see the event. Picking on 18-22 year old writers attempting to publish a college newspaper is playing up a league from your levels of journalistic standards. If questioning whether or not to redact someone’s name, you should redact it, have the discussion, and reveal it if that’s how the discussion concludes. Your petty “journalism” has been more harmful than anything the three editors of the Record could do with this story.

You claim to be entertaining, but only to yourself. You claim to write about something interesting, but only as it can be turned into another salvo in your political fights. You claim to write to educate, but you aim to inculcate.

“done with this” Do you honestly think that this case should not be interesting to the men of Williams and all potential future male applicants? If so, then you haven’t read the Complaint and the other filings or you seek DDF’s silence on the matter because of how unbelievably damning it is (in an effort to protect the college).

What the case boils down to is that the college has shown that it will adjudicate a male student “guilty” of rape on the flimsiest of evidence, if you can call the inconsistent statements made by the employee to her “friends” AFTER she was told that she was being investigated (nearly two years after the alleged “incident”) “evidence.” What was the alleged “rape” like anyway? An uncomfortable and unusual position! That is what constitutes rape now at Williams. Every single female student on this campus must be raped on a regular basis then; every male student a rapist. And that isn’t interesting?

Be warned, men of Williams College. If you and your girlfriend have an argument, she can go accuse you of rape and tell a bunch of friends about it, and on that basis alone, no other evidence whatsoever, and she can get you expelled.

You need to be more specific. I do not pick on (or even criticize!) the Record in this post. I merely ponder some complex questions that they are confronting right now.

The legal briefings of one party to a suit are of little interest to the college community.

Really? Sexual assault has been one of the biggest topics at Williams over the last five years. It made the cover of the Alumni Review! It has taken up thousands of hours of administrator time. Outside of divestment, it is the topic that Falk is most quizzed about at alumni gatherings.

I predict that the Record will disagree with your judgment and place this story on the front page. If it does, will you admit you are wrong?

Especially as most mistakes came from an employee at Wooster, not at Williams

Untrue! The biggest issue/mistake here is the refusal to grant Doe his degree. That happened after Bolton left.

The record finished its last edition before this story broke so of course they haven’t covered it. They just finished selecting a new board this past week. The next issue will be after Christmas like always.

For what it’s worth, I am glad that you are posing these questions when no one else is. As a student who’s only recently been privy to and witnessed a lot of problems caused by the administration, I believe that the Record should play a larger role in holding Williams accountable, just as other student newspapers in other universities do. For example, at Harvard, it was through the investigative reporting of their newspaper that their administration took action against their men’s soccer team for their rating “list” of female players. I’ve never witnessed this at Williams nor with the Record, and I believe that’s extremely sad.

Why are you so caught up on the fact that the girl slapped her boyfriend? HE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED HER. I know, I know, you don’t believe that a woman can be sexually assaulted by her boyfriend and continue the relationship, but that is nothing more than your own ignorance and misogyny.

Males are all John Doe now at Williams. Seriously. Anyone who has read the complaint and all its exhibits could not possibly come to a conclusion other than John Doe was railroaded. To assume otherwise would require the prejudice of a man hating feminazi

Let me recap, as some others have tried to do but seem to be consistently ignored with people who seem to have an agenda. All that was alleged was that the sex was uncomfortable and in an unusual position. She did not express to John that she didn’t want to be having sex. The policy at the time required lack of consent be communicated. It wasn’t. The employee made contradictory statements to her friends about the alleged incident. One didn’t even recall the employee telling her about it. Her credibility had already been shown to be lacking and this charge was only made to officials during the investigation. As far as I am aware, this was never reported to the police. Williams policy says that the administration encourages the accuser to report the crime to the police. Did they do that? Most likely not because the police would consider this a false report as would any one else with a brain.

There isn’t a more clear case of a “crazy ex girlfiend” that I know of than this.